[hughrr]

That sounds about right. I was interviewed for a fairly well known company on contract a number of years ago. I was told the product was top secret and it was going to be amazing etc etc.

So roll in on first day after signing up to fuck knows what and it was a ticket touting company. I listened to their pitch which lasted until lunch, went and got myself a sandwich, sat on a bench and thought “fuck it, this is wrong” and just went home.

When I told the agent he went crazy at me because I’d burned his commission. Gave them the finger too. In some places it’s bastards all the way down.

Next time someone pulled that on me, I cut the interview off and only worked for predefined work for a number of years. If something is off grid on your contract, no is the answer.

[sbarre]

For anyone wondering (I had to look it up):

ticket touting = ticket scalping.

[jacobsenscott]

What's unethical about ticket scalping?

[phkahler]

>> What's unethical about ticket scalping?

It artificially inflates ticket prices by inserting a completely unnecessary middle-man in the purchase process. This is done by people with no intent to actually use the tickets they bought, so it's very much not the same as "oh I can't go would you like to buy my ticket?"

This is similar to a dark pattern I've seen at shopping malls where they offer a valet service, but also rope off all the close parking spaces for valet. This creates an artificial scarcity of close parking spaces which helps to drive the valet business. If they never did this there would be little desire for the valet service.

[fennecfoxen]

> It artificially inflates ticket prices

On the contrary, it naturally inflates the price.

Tickets that can be scalped were priced at below what you might naively consider "market" prices. The purchasers gain some value from this, and usually the sellers do too — often in the form of hype, perennially useful for promotional purposes. Someone who scored a hard-to-get ticket for a good price is likely quite excited about it.

But the difference means there is a strong incentive to turn the difference into cash, and even with inefficient processes in the middle, that incentive is substantial.

You can of course spend all day saying it's "wrong" and it's a position you are welcome to take; there are interesting questions we could ask about who should rightly "own" abstractions like the hype, and why, but it is not protected by normal property law, and if property rights don't exist or aren't enforced then you know that the necessary conditions for free-market efficiency do not exist.

But again, it's as natural as any other economic effect.

[bun_at_work]

How is the price inflation natural? The supply-demand relationship is unnaturally muddled with when someone restricts supply by purchasing all the tickets at once, especially with automated tools average consumers don't have/use. They then just resell the tickets - not at some supply-demand balanced value, but at their determined value, often 200%+ the original price.

Supply is already fixed on things like tickets anyway, due to venue sizes, so this is just further restriction. It's not natural.

[FireBeyond]

I'm not a particularly big fan of Kid Rock, for a number of reasons. But he and a few artists had started doing things to thwart scalpers.

Namely, he'd announce tours slowly. And basically the strategy was that as scalpers bought out shows, he'd add another show in the same city. And keep doing that until there was no demand, no resale market, so scalpers were forced to sell at face or near face value. "I can keep throwing dates at you, and you're paying for the seats, so it doesn't hurt me, but no-one will buy them from you".

Eventually the scalpers learned to not, or minimally resell his tickets.

[orangecat]

They then just resell the tickets - not at some supply-demand balanced value

It is the supply-demand balanced value. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be able to sell them.

[phkahler]

>> Tickets that can be scalped were priced at below what you might naively consider "market" prices.

Maybe. The scalpers are taking a risk buying tickets they may not sell, so it might serve as a mechanism to find the market price for the tickets. OTOH it also creates artificial scarcity which artificially raises the price.

In the end, the scalper is inserting themself into a transaction between two parties that didn't ask for them to do so and were mutually satisfied with the situation prior to that (nothing changed for the seller, and I think most buyers would appreciate the lower price).

[ska]

> But again, it's as natural as any other economic effect.

Often I hear people supporting scalping as an example of a free market working, and I get that argument.

The problem is the market that actually exists is anything but free, and largely based on deceptive practices and even outright collusion, which is I think what is what a lot of people really object to.

[dmd]

Yeah, that makes no sense. Valet should use the farthest spaces possible.

[ydlr]

> >> What's unethical about ticket scalping?

> It artificially inflates ticket prices by inserting a completely unnecessary middle-man in the purchase process. This is done by people with no intent to actually use the tickets they bought, so it's very much not the same as "oh I can't go would you like to buy my ticket?"

I think this is called "retail."

[ratherbefuddled]

Retailers are generally providing a service. Somewhere to go and look at and try out a product, many products conveniently under one roof. Scalpers / touts are not, they are parasites.

[akiselev]

Retailers are also have strict liability for the products they sell. When something goes wrong, it is up to them to make customers right and go after the manufacturer to recover those damages.

[ydlr]

I agree. I just find it amusing that similar behavior can be viewed so differently depending on context.

There is nothing inherently wrong with middlemen asserting themselves into a transaction. Our whole economy depends on it.

[ehutch79]

Not really, as scalpers insert themselves between a retail ticket vendor, and the consumer.

[neitherboosh]

Fans who really want to see their favorite artist/sports teams get extorted, and the money goes to scalpers instead of the artists and venues which are actually providing value. Scalpers provide no value to society.

[randomraccoon]

Planet Money has done an excellent episode on this - https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/25/195641030/epis.... While I broadly agree with this, I would say that scalpers can actually provide a service of exchanging money for time and convenience. For example, you may have a free or cheap concert that sells out extremely quickly, but with scalpers, those with lots of money can always get a ticket. Much of the economy is built on the similar concept of arbitrage, where someone buys something cheaply and sells it for a markup to those who lack the ability or knowledge to get it from the seller's source.

That said, scalpers in particular seem to cause a whole lot more harm than good in general. As the above podcast addresses, it's a very difficult problem to solve systemically if you are intentionally undervaluing your goods.

[swagasaurus-rex]

Sounds like an oxymoron. Like hoarding toilet paper, gasoline, water during times of emergency, it limits the true supply.

You could argue the “true price” is what the scalpers charge (who will stop drinking water when the prices skyrocket?).

But in reality they squeeze the supply to create artificial scarcity. Any economist knows this is market manipulation.

[ketzo]

> For example, you may have a free or cheap concert that sells out extremely quickly, but with scalpers, those with lots of money can always get a ticket.

But how do you square that with scalpers causing the tickets to sell out so quickly? I mean, they're the ones creating their own market. They're not really providing a service if they're the ones creating the annoying need for the service in the first place.

[summm]

Then just don't pay the inflated price and don't go to the event?

[pao]

Come on, man.

Remember those guys last year who would drive around buying up all the masks, selling them online for 10x? You don't know why everybody hated them? This is why:

The original seller has a reputation to protect and doesn't want to be seen as taking advantage. Maybe it's a musician who would rather sell to kids who are willing to wait in line than to whoever has the most money. Maybe a pharmacy selling masks in 2020. The arbitrage opportunity is for somebody with no reputation or scruples, who chooses to see themselves as just an Angel of the Free Market. To everyone else, he's a jerk.

[rvense]

I like to call this line of thinking "capitalist determinism". Basically, if there is money to be made, it must be made. Letting any other concern interfere with this extracting of value is silly, or unnatural - even immoral.

People talk about it in these detached terms, call it laws of economics and say that it is something that happens naturally. But of course, when one remembers that these so-called laws of economics describes interactions between people, and that you always can choose what kind of influence you want to have on the world.

[mjburgess]

It's a weird one.

Events should auction off a percentage of tickets, and reserve a percentage "for fans" -- and all fixed to a name & photo id.

One has to suspect that many events are in-cahoots with scalpers, and are just pricing their tickets below the market for PR reasons.

[sbarre]

> all fixed to a name & photo id

You're not the first to think of this I assure you.

Most modern scalper platforms collect your credit card and personal info in advance and use it to buy your ticket with their bot. So even if the venue is matching purchase info to your ID and credit card, it all lines up.

Scalpers aren't hawking tickets on show night 200 feet from the venue on the sidewalk anymore.

You pre-buy through them to guarantee that you'll get the ticket you want since everything sells out super fast (because of scalpers!) and you pay the markup for that service.

[matt74827289]

People tend to not like scalping of any products, it raises the price of the product while adding little to no value. The hate towards scalping is quite visible in the GPU market due to its limited supply

[Causality1]

Is there anything not unethical about ticket scalping? Tickets being non-essential entertainment is the only reason it's legal.